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Belgium A to Z – W and X

W – WafflesWaffles are a bunch of butter, flour and sugar battered together and cooked between two hot irons. These hot irons are like toasters and are called a waffle maker or, in Nengels, waffelizer. In Belgium there are two official types of waffles: the nice rectangular ones from Brussels, which don’t have caramelized sugar and are lighter, and the ones from Liège, which are dense and sticky. Then there are the free interpretations of those concepts that can be found in supermarkets or made at home. Waffelizers are a common appliance in Belgium homes, like a bread roaster or a coffee maker. Once someone even brought one to the office along which a huge pan of dough and we baked waffles all afternoon until we felt sick and the entire building smelled of butter.

I love waffles. Well, not the waffles themselves – there’s nothing so special about them. But they’re comforting. First, well, because it’s butter and carbs. Second, where there are people there are waffles. Even there’s nothing else to eat for sale, I can always count on a warm waffle to stall my hunger. Third, because it’s nice to grab one in the street when it’s really cold and warm up my hands and my tummy. I love waffles because I don’t have paper cones full of coal roasted chestnuts.

X – XS

I’m chubby – there, I’ve said it for the whole WWW to read.

I’m chubby or curvy in the good days (lusciously curvy in the excellent days). And despite the increase in sports activities, I don’t know if it’s the food or the hormones or what, but I’m getting chubbier by the year since I’ve been living in Belgium. Luckily, this change in my body was accompanied by a change in clothes tags. My Large/Medium in Portugal is now a flattering Small (sometimes XS) in Belgium.

It’s as if clothes retailers here accepted their reality: Belgian girls are generally healthily curvy (and often quite hot and/or athletic). Hence, they decided to make clothes FOR them, not for them to LOOK AT with sad resentment because it won’t fit. They decided to sell nice bras for womanly pairs of boobs, tight jeans for curvy good quality I-intend-to-have-children-someday booties and dresses tho wrap around feminine bodies, not sticks.

(If you’re Belgian and you’re reading this and you just think I said you’re fat, you’re not getting the point so stop reading and go strive for an eating disorder.)

Sounds pretty obvious, doesn’t it? So why did I have to come to Belgium to not scavenge all sales season for a piece in the piles and piles of no one -fitting XS and S leftovers in the shops along side the chubby women (curvy in the good days… some of them at least) who make the majority of the Portuguese feminine population?

Of course, the skinnier girls complain. If I can fit in an XS, they’d need an XXXXS. But I find this very pleasant! It’s as if I’ve been suffering from rejection and attempted brainwashing by the Inditex empire all my life and finally saw the light!